Life with Wilma Nigel Donnelly on owning a VW T3 camper

Taking the first step on the motorhome ladder is expensive and can be daunting. If you have a limited budget, an older ’van offers an enticing way in – but it’s not without pitfalls, explains Nigel Donnelly

1 Running an older campervan is an emotional rollercoaster. When it’s good, it’s very very good, but when it’s bad...

The idea of life on the road is exciting, but for many potential owners, motorhome cost is a major hurdle. Sorting a first ’van purchase can be an expensive business and working out where to start needs careful consideration.

If you are on a tight budget, the popular options are borrowing money or self-building. The third option is to buy something older. It will lack the mod-cons of a modern motorhome, but if the aim is to travel and explore, it shouldn’t matter how much you spend, right?

That was very much our thinking as we started researching our best route into motorhome ownership. A limited budget wasn’t our only stumbling block. We needed to park the vehicle in the street – we have no driveway. We didn’t want to street-park a coachbuilt, so we had to opt for a van conversion. We didn’t have the cash for a posh modern model, so our budget dictated that we needed something older.

Location, location, location

The final limitation for us is our location. We live just inside London’s Low Emission Zone and that severely limits the commercial vehicles we can have. Most of the old commercial vehicles are diesel-powered and the majority are excluded, so we needed something that was modern (too expensive), small enough not to be classed as a commercial, or petrol-powered. These factors gave us the shortest of shortlists.

In the end, the choice of an older VW made the most sense. There are loads of them about, parts are easy to get hold of and what they lack in sophistication, they make up for in simplicity.

We decided against the pretty T2 ‘bay window’ models, based on budget as much as anything. Shopping carefully, you might be able to unearth a petrol-powered T4 conversion, but the obvious choice for us was a T3 ‘Wedge’. Built between 1979 and 1991 for European markets, we felt these were modern enough to be usable, but classic enough to be worth investing in. We also thought that with a classic veedub, we’d have the best chance of getting some money back when it was time to move it on. We would be lying if we said we didn’t love the way they look, too!

Target acquired

Finding a Wedge isn’t actually that difficult. They were in production for years and the popularity of Volkswagen commercials among fans means they were being cherished long before anyone thought of doing the same with Ford Transits or Leyland Sherpas of the same era.

We started by scouring all the websites you might expect – eBay, Preloved and Gumtree all had a selection of ’vans which seemed to fall into two categories: disasters and minters. There didn’t seem to be much in between. Those that did look good were often at the wrong end of the country or cost more than we could afford.

On a Friday afternoon scroll through Gumtree, we came across a very early 1980 Transporter which looked as though it fitted the bill – this was a proper camper conversion, rather than just a mattress slung in the back of a van, with an elevating-roof, and it was a cheerful yellow.

A quick call to the owner told us she referred to the ’van as ‘Wilma’ and had enjoyed owning her, but was emigrating, so had to sell. She was local and we arranged to view on Sunday morning.

We took a look and Wilma was plainly quite scruffy and needed a service, but looked a good base for a travel ’van.

She wasn’t home-made, but a Reimo conversion, with a low-profile elevating-roof, three-way fridge, gas heater and onboard water tank. She even had double-glazed windows and a receipt for a replacement engine. Crucially, underneath all of those bumps and scrapes was a vehicle that wasn’t eaten up with rust.